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The point being the criticism of crypto as a whole as a tremendous waste of energy will still be valid until bitcoin is a small fraction of crypto.

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Bitcoin is not going to go away just because lots of people criticize it. Bitcoin is only going to go away when we build an alternative that has (most) of its (perceived) benefits and fewer of its drawbacks.

IOW, stop criticizing "crypto" and start focusing on criticizing "Bitcoin". Be specific about your arguments, otherwise everyone will feel like they are on a Mexican standoff and you will never get the support to win the good fight.

The chief perceived benefit of Bitcoin is its speculative asset value. We may try to unseat this with a new, less environmentally harmful speculative asset, but it's unethical to deliberately attempt to suck people into a negative-sum scheme, plus it won't work: crypto coins move in tandem with each other.

You are reversing cause and effect. The original promise of Bitcoin was to become a p2p payment system that could be an alternative (not a replacement) for cash. All of the speculation around it comes from that.

The unethical thing is to keep BTC around just because there are so many sunk costs associated with it.

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